Critically Endangered
Western swamp turtle
Pseudemydura umbrina
The western swamp turtle or western swamp tortoise is a critically endangered species of freshwater turtle endemic to a small portion of Western Australia.
Appearance
The colour of the western swamp turtle varies dependent on age and the environment where it is found. Typical colouration for hatchlings is grey above with bright cream and black below. The colour of adults varies with differing swamp conditions, and varies from medium yellow-brown in clay swamps to almost black with a maroon tinge in the black coffee-coloured water of sandy swamps.
It is the smallest chelid found in Australia.
Adult males do not exceed a length of 155 mm or a weight of 550 g. Females are smaller, not growing beyond 135 mm in carapace length or a weight of 410 g.
Range and habitat
The western swamp turtle or western swamp tortoise is a critically endangered species of freshwater turtle endemic to a small portion of Western Australia. As a consequence of the greatly altered habitat in the area in that it occurs near Perth, Western Australia, it exists in small fragmented populations, making the species critically endangered.
Threatening processes include small, fragmented populations occurring in nature reserves that are smaller than an individual's home range, predation by the introduced red fox Vulpes vulpes, changed hydrology due to land-use changes and extraction of groundwater, and reducing rainfall due to climate change.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
In crisis
The legal status of the species as listed by the Australian federal and state (W.A.) governments is critically endangered. The IUCN Red List assessed the species as Critically Endangered. A recovery plan was first published in 1994 and has been updated since, the most recent version is dated 2010.
Recovery actions include population monitoring, management of nature reserves, and captive breeding at Perth Zoo and subsequent reintroduction and introduction. This species is notable in conservation history for being the first example of an endangered vertebrate that is being translocated to a distant location (200 kilometres poleward) expressly because of climate change.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix I. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Western swamp turtle is Critically Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Western swamp turtle, Wikidata item Q2050578. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
